


The Unexpected

by dixiehellcat



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: American Wizarding World AU, Aurors, Gen, Ghost Hunters, Not JKR Compliant, Post-Hogwarts, americanwizarding tumblr compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22899421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: The stars of a popular ghost hunting TV show have secrets their audience doesn't suspect.
Kudos: 2





	The Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> In a conversation on reddit last week in the HP fanfic group, somebody suggested a prompt about wizards showing up at a haunting that had been terrifying Muggles and casually dealing with it. I mentioned I had written a snippet, a while back, along those lines, about a team of Aurors undercover as TV ghost hunters. Several folks asked me to find and post it, so I polished it up a bit and here it is! The Teen rating is only for a few Muggle swear words.
> 
> Note: this was written in 2011, long before JKR's sadly ill-informed attempt to create the American wizarding world, which I don't adhere to anyway. My concept comes from this wonderful headcanon-y tumblr: https://americanwizarding.tumblr.com/

_2011, Missouri, USA_

The cast of _Ghostly Pursuits_ had split up to investigate the decrepit old house, cameras and paranormal measuring gear in hand. Zoe, the team leader, sent her comrade Erin to the oldest and most decrepit part of the house. She usually assigned Erin the creepiest duty; when you were filming for one of the most popular reality shows on the planet, reaction shots were everything, and Erin never failed to deliver good face when any peculiar noise came knocking. Erin grumbled, as she usually did, at least when video was rolling—her persona among the team was the reluctant, easily spooked adventurer. It had won her a devoted fan following, and played off nicely against Zoe’s fierce curiosity and willingness to call out anything that smacked of an aggressive haunting. Nikki, the third Ghost Pursuer, was their balance point, cool as ice cream and with a mind like a steel trap.

While Erin investigated the attic, Zoe and Nikki spilt up to check out the house’s other two floors. Neither had much luck on their respective explorations, so they met an hour later in the dusty but relatively solid downstairs parlor, where they had set up their base. They took a break, ate a snack, and tested some of their gear. Their network loved to emphasize how _Ghostly Pursuits_ was the only ‘real’ show following paranormal investigators: no extra camera crew, no fake apparitions, no calling bugs and dust and headlights as spiritual manifestations. The two were about to go looking for Erin when they heard footfalls pound and she rushed in. “Spider!” she gasped. “Huge, fuckin’, spider.”

Immediately Zoe and Nikki grabbed their gear and followed their shaky friend upstairs and through a maze of hallways, till she halted outside a closed door. “Let’s see this huge fuckin’ spider,” Zoe said, trying to tease Erin into calming down; but Erin shook her head vehemently. “C’mon, I know you don’t like them, but face your fear. We’ll be right here with you. I’ll even let you step on it.” Still Erin refused to budge, and looked so scared Zoe was actually worried about her. It was a good thing, Zoe thought, that they had left the cameras downstairs; Erin was going to be so embarrassed later at the way she had overreacted. “Stay with her,” she told Nikki. “I’ll go squash it so she can get herself together and we can get back to work.”

Nikki nodded, calm as ever. Zoe pushed the door open, cautiously pointing her flashlight overhead so no nasty bugs fell on her head and messed up her hair. She scanned the room, seeing nothing at first, until a dark squirmy appendage of some kind caught her eye behind an old dresser. She stepped carefully closer and focused the light on it, and froze in her tracks.

It wasn’t a spider. It was a nest of snakes, black and wriggly, dozens of them. As though they sensed her presence, they began to untwist from around each other and slither across the dusty wood floor toward her. Their movement exposed a figure beneath the nest, a clown doll with a psychotic grin on its half-eaten face, a face whose structure was horribly similar to her own. It lurched to its feet and walked stiffly toward her with the rest of the snake nest writhing in its broken hollow head. Zoe couldn’t move, couldn’t scream even, as all of her worst nightmares lumbered toward her to seize and devour her. When she heard the door creak behind her, she could barely force out words. “Don’t—don’t come in here—it’s—“

Suddenly, as Zoe felt her friends’ presences behind her, the horror’s motion faltered. It flickered like an old film, and its form changed; the clown doll melted for a moment into the figure of a weeping woman clutching a small body in her arms, then into a spider the size of a St Bernard. The wavering of shape broke the spell of terrified paralysis that held Zoe. “Fuck!” she yelped. “It’s a boggart!” Her fingers flew to a long zippered pocket on her pants leg—the fans of _Ghostly Pursuits_ thought her tactical pants were a fashion statement; they had no idea all those pockets were so handy for holding gear, including gear no Muggle should ever see. Her wand slipped into her welcoming grasp, and she leveled the twelve and a half inch length of polished ebony wood at the shapeshifter. When it had faced only one foe at a time, taking the shape of her greatest fear had been easy; now, facing three witches with wands drawn, it struggled and failed. 

“ _Riddikulus!_ ” Erin shouted first; she’d always been fastest off the mark with a good Charm spell. The boggart jerked, hiccupped, and transformed into a short, fat, drunk male Muggle with a plastic badge pinned to his loud polyester shirt. 

The other two women laughed out loud. “Good one!” Nikki said approvingly, as the boggart staggered around a bit, fell on its face, shrank and vanished.

Erin shrugged, the confidence she often veiled in public back in full effect. “Hey, first thing that came to mind after that personal appearance we did last week,” she replied modestly. “Those Vegas convention-goers are always good for a laugh. Besides, I’m the one who freaked out like a dumbass, I figured I ought to dispel the thing.”

“It wasn’t all on you.” Now Zoe was the one who felt embarrassed. “I’m supposed to be the specialist on Defense against the Dark Arts, and I came barging in here by myself like an idiot, never thinking what it might be. Remind me again, somebody, how the hell Headmistress McGonagall ever let me graduate.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Nikki joked, holstering her mahogany wand as they headed back downstairs. “Maybe because there were only three American exchange students there during the Battle of Hogwarts, and only one crazy-ass Gryffindor who took on four Death Eaters at once and kicked all their asses. Merlin’s dick, Zo, quit being so rough on yourself.”

“Hey!” Zoe retorted. “I seem to recall a wild Ravenclaw Yank who cooked up a trap that took out a dozen werewolves or more in that same battle. Wouldn’t that have been the same Claw who years later thought pitching a ghost-hunting show to Muggle TV was a great cover for a crack team of Aurors to monitor magical activity around the US?”

“And the same Claw,” Erin put in, “who talked a big clumsy Hufflepuff into becoming an Auror instead of hiding out in the Department of Mysteries basement the rest of her life.” She raked fingers through her unruly curls and flopped down on a rickety folding chair in the parlor. “ _Accio_ munchies,” she added with a wave of her ivy wand before stowing it and passing around the candy bag that flew to her hand.

“You would’ve been wasted riding a desk, Erin,” Zoe said and took a handful. “And think of all the fun you’d be missing.”

“Oh yeah. Walking into a vacant room and finding an Acromantula staring me in the face. Serious fun.” Erin paused before inserting more candy into her mouth. “Have we ever actually found an Acromantula stateside?”

“No,” Nikki replied, munching some trail mix, “but I think other researchers have.”

After a few moments of companionable quiet and crunching, Zoe suddenly said, ‘You know what I don't think anybody ever _has_ found in the States, though? A boggart.”

“Seriously?” Erin brightened. “Mother Bishop’s petticoats! I hope my camera was set for magic.” She scrambled to her feet, located the gear she had dropped in her earlier flight and began fiddling with it, mumbling excitedly to herself. 

Zoe watched with a chuckle. Nikki’s idea had seemed crazy initially, but they were the perfect team to carry it out. Friends since school, all raised in Muggle households, they were even more comfortable with the Muggle world than most American wizards and witches. They could convincingly pull off the roles of earnest ghost hunters, while using their positions to gather information and track down everything from weres, to dragons, to leftover followers of Voldemort. Their equipment, modified with help from a wizarding techno-genius or two, helped them keep a foot in each world.

“I got it!” Erin’s happy yelp tugged Zoe out of her thoughtful pause. “If I’d had sense enough to look at the fuckin’ footage instead of curling up in the fetal position, I’d’ve known right away it was a boggart.”

“But that raises the question,” Nikki said, “of what the fuck a boggart is doing in a ratty old house in the middle of Missouri, when they’ve never been reported in America before.”

“Yep. Guess that means more work for us.” Zoe stood and stretched. “Let’s finish checking this place out. We need some more footage for the show, and we need to make sure there aren’t more wherever that one came from.”

They plotted their next moves, and with a fist bump, and wands close at hand (though out of camera range) this time, the three witches moved out again.

_fin_

If anybody feels led to expand on this brief snippet, feel free! I never had time to follow up, but I had definitely set up an interesting path for the three friends to follow. Here's the bit of background info I found in the file.

The _Ghostly Pursuits_ gals transferred to Hogwarts in their fourth years of school. When Voldemort came to power, they were the only exchange students there, and were not allowed to leave, hence how they ended up participating in the great battle. Before Hogwarts, Nikki attended the Salem Institute of Magic, Zoe went to L’ecole de Laveau/Laveau Academy, and Erin the Blackgate School (all from americanwizarding, as noted above)

Wands and Patronuses (from the OG Pottermore, I think? I filled out quizzes trying to think as the main characters would)  
Wands--  
Zoe--Ebony, 12.5 inches, smooth and supple, good for delicate wand work. Core: Essence from Phoenix talon  
Ebony is unquestionably accepted as the most powerful wood when it comes to magic. The user of this wand will have limitless power as well as unprecedented protectional qualities. Few wizards are chosen by an Ebony wand unless they are believed to have potential for great power. Ebony is the most famous of the Dark wandwoods, although not the most powerful. However, for visual impact and power, it is amongst the best.  
Nikki--Mahogany, 13 inches, pliable, excellent for Transfiguration. Core: Unicorn hair from tail  
Mahogany is known to be excellent for transfiguration and makes a great tool for warding off the Dark Arts. Wands similar to yours: James Potter possessed a Mahogany wand, 11 inches. Mahogany is a good all-around wandwood.  
Erin-- Ivy, 13 inches, pliable, suitable for charm work. Core: Eyelash of a Siren  
Ivy is the least known wood, with remarkable qualities yet mysterious powers and said to be the least researched type of wood, and therefore rarely used in wandmaking. Its mysteriousness brings about uncertain powers in its magical qualities but is known to be unusually powerful in conjuring. An uncommon wandwood due to the difficulty of harvesting thick enough pieces, it is often worth the trouble, as it is deceptively strong.

Patronuses—  
Zoe--Your Patronus is the Wolf! The wolf is a symbol of wisdom, loyalty and independence. He is one of history's more revered (and feared) characters. That your Patronus is a wolf says that you are very wise as a person. You tend to be loyal to your friends, even when they screw up, but you are also independent. Finding that balance is key; finding it will ensure that you will be a wonderful witch or wizard!  
Nikki--Your Patronus is the Cougar! The cougar is a symbol of power, swiftness and balance. He is one of the most beautiful creatures in North America and will protect you with his powerful claws. That your Patronus is a cougar says that you are a quick thinker who leads a very balanced life. This quick thinking and balance cause you to often be chosen as a leader. Be careful not to let that power go to your head and you will be an excellent witch or wizard!  
Erin--Your Patronus is the Coyote! the symbolic meaning of Coyote resonates with the stuff of youth. Cocky, rebellious, fearless, spunky, playful....qualities that are electric, raw and driving. Everything about Coyote's seem to say "lean and keen." So, when the Coyote comes into our awareness, or presents itself as a totem, we're tapping into a high voltage energy - crazy.

Areas of Specialty--  
Zoe—DADA, Nikki—Transfiguration, Erin--Charms


End file.
